I still dig EverNote

I’m still digging EverNote.

Mann remixes Postel?

Is Merlin Mann restating Postel’s law? Postel says: “be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.” Merlin says “be very consistent about how you store information but exceedingly generous about all the ways you might cap…

Earworm:

“Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega has to be somewhere in the top 5 all-time worst. It’s been over a decade since that song received airplay, and I STILL wake up with it jangling through my head like a ten-ton hangover.

For the last 13 years for some horrible reason I often wake up in the morning with the Bobby Brown song, “Every Little Step I Take.” And all throughout the day, I can never get it out of my head. I have heard the song since I was 13 and that was 16 years ago. So what gives?

The most “persistent” earworms (as defined by revisiting me many times over a course of many years) are:

• Gilligan’s Island theme (yes, how sad is that…now I can get rid of it by doing the trick of singing the words to Amazing Grace to the saem tune…)
• Girl from Ipanema (and I *HATE* that song)
• Kashmir - Led Zepplin (at least I liek this one)

The most adamant one was “I Don’t Mind at All” by Bourgeois Tagg. Good Lord. I couldn’t remember who the song was by or even any of the rest of the lyrics (though I could hum the tune). I called the local 80’s station. No love. I asked at Best Buy (what was I thinking) and the local independent record store (at least that had some hope of succeeding). I finally called in this big guns, a friend of an ex-boyfriend of mine, who I think might know every song ever written. I hadn’t talked to him in years, but three days after I sent the email to “editor at citysearch” (which is where I thought he worked) that basically said “Hi. I am trying to reach Jerry because there’s this bad 80’s tune with the lyric “I don’t mind at all” and something about “misery loving company”, Jerry emailed me back with the answer. (And then I had to find a used CD place that had the blame thing!!) Whew.

The funny thing is that the radio in my head is so insistent that when I was in the 9th grade I made an index card of the songs that I could “play” (in my head) to banish any bad earworms (though I hadn’t heard that most apt term at the time) that I carried in my wallet. I still have the card.

Earworms? Good name for them.

“In 1814 we took a little trip, …” “I’m Henry the Eighth, I am, Henry the Eighth, I am, I am. …”

re Next Actions and dependencies:

I currently use a wiki as a web-based personal organizer, but I want something with more structure. I’m now writing a new wiki-like organizer that knows nothing about Projects or Next Actions. It only knows about tasks and waiting-for dependencies between tasks. My organizer will then DERIVE your Project and Next Actions from this tree of task dependencies:

Projects = tree root, i.e. tasks upon which no other task depends (no task is waiting-for this task) Next Actions = tree leaves, i.e. tasks which have no dependencies (waiting-for no other task)

I haven’t tested this idea yet. In my head, it seems like an elegant way to create order from chaos. However, I worry that management of task dependencies will be too cumbersome for a web-based app. For example, how does a user input task dependencies? How does a user view a tree of task dependencies? Are dependency cycles OK?

There was an app that did versioning of your whole system for OS 9, called Rewind, I think, from Power On Software. The trouble was that constantly versioning your whole system can be resource-intensive. I used the app for a while, but it ended up being more of a pain than it was worth.

“In the Meantime” - Spacehog

and

“Immigrant Song” - Led Zep

Once I hear or think of either of those songs, I’m stuck with them the rest of the day.

Earworms? I’ve got a whole can of them. The worst was ‘The Bear Necessities’ from the Jungle Book. I woke up with it going around my head one morning (actually, when I woke up my brain was half way through the song), and it was on continuous repeat for about 3 days.

Recycle todo items? Egads! What about the satisfaction of checking off an item as done?

I’ve never actually succumbed, but once or twice I have found myself on the verge of adding a task that was already completed just for the satisfaction of checking it off.

I concur on the non-digital capture though. Despite my hardcore digital nature, I’ve found that using paper for initial capture is much faster, easier, and less distracting. Not only is paper more efficient, but it allows me to be more present while making a note rather than slipping off into PDA-land.

Earworm: “Joanna,” by Kool and the Gang. Circa 1984, when I was a student in Boston, a couple moved in below me. They were recent immigrants and, it seemed, terrified of being robbed. When they left for work in the morning, they left their record player playing a 45 of “Joanna.” It played for hours on end, presumably to fool burglars into thinking someone was home (some crazy person, listening to “Joanna” for hours!). This went on for a couple of weeks, and then my new neighbors moved out. To this day, the bassline from “Joanna” comes into my head, unbidden, unwelcome, unmerciful.

With regard to your ‘Next next action’ bit… Isn’t that basically the essence of the PigPog method? I have taken to doing something like this for every project. I simply create an entourage ToDo for each project and prepend some sort of nickname in brackets. Let’s say that I’ve nicknamed this project ‘GREAT.’ The the ToDo would look as follows:

[GREAT]Think of something great

I then keep all of the ‘next next actions’ in the notes field, preceded by the overall objective of the project, as follows:

=Objective= To do something great and worthwhile

=Actions= Verify that it’s actually worthwhile Do the great/worthwhile thing

So when I’ve done the first NA, I just copy the next one and paste it in place of ‘Think of something great’, and so on until I’ve exhausted all actions and can finally check it off. Works for me.

You’re right about those who try to use their Palm (or any other list) as a “collection bucket” that David Allen talks about in “Getting Things Done.” Collecting, organizing, and processing should be discreet activities and the lines shouldn’t blur between them. I find that when I try to use my lists as my collection buckets, I wind up managing my stuff instead of doing my stuff.

earworms?! I’ll open up a can of earworms:

Black Eyed Peas, “Let’s get it started”; Buster Poindexter, “Hit the road Jack”; Shania Twain, “Man! I feel like a woman!”; Quincy Jones, “Soul Bossa Nova” (The Austin Powers tune)

and the Dune sized worm of them all delivered by the OfficeMax commercials… The Spinners, “The Rubberband Man”

Merlin, with regards to “Save. Save. Save.” check out SaveMe, which’ll save “all your files automatically, regardless of the program”.

My favorite earworm story is this: I had the little bass bridge from Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” stuck in my head (off and on) for YEARS, not knowing what it was or where it came from. You can imagine the loud and embarassing epiphany when I finally heard the song again (in public, as fate would have it) and was finally able to match that little snatch of bass that had been in my head for so long with the song it belonged to.

Back on topic, I look forward to the day 20 years from now (10?) when everything I write on any piece of paper anywhere is automagically put in a searchable archive for me. Of course, by then the use model might be to just talk to my ubiquitous computer a la Star Trek, without writing anything down at all.

They Laughed When I Sat Down At the Piano…But When I Started to Play!~

Also, Jordan: Hipster PDAs do imbue immortality; to date, none of their users have ever died, to my knowledge.

We wrap up today with Lao Tzu, who, centuries ago, provided the best defense of the Hipster PDA I’ve ever heard:

      When the fool learns the Way, He laughs at it.
      Yet if the fool did not laugh at it,
      It would not be the Way.
      Indeed, if you are seeking the Way,
      Listen for the laughter of fools. </i>